SHOULD GOOGLE POPULATE EVERY MAP ON GOOGLE MAPS?
Mashable
August 13, 2008
CA
Google is under fire today over reports claiming the company failed
to include any data for Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan on Google
maps. Worse, some reports suggest that once the fighting broke out
between Russia and Georgia, all relevant information about the latter
was wiped from Google maps.
According to the Azerbaijan Press agency, all "the relevant maps went
blank as soon as fighting broke out." But Google contends that that
assertion is simply false and it has not changed anything in quite
some time.
"Google has not made any recent change to Georgia, Armenia and
Azerbaijan in Google Maps," the company said in a statement. "We do
not have local data for those countries and that is why local details
such as landmarks and cities do not appear."
In response to even more public outcry, Google Maps product manager,
Dave Barth, said Google failed to include relevant street and city
information because it wasn’t satisfied with available map data. But
in an attempt to quell user distress, Barth said that Google would
now input basic information about all of these countries instead of
leave them blank.
And while some users are applauding Google for doing just that, I
think it begs the question of whether or not Google should populate
countries regardless of the quality of data, or if it should leave
countries blank until it has the data necessary to make the maps as
accurate as possible.
The way I see it, Google has no responsibility to its users to populate
every country in the world if it feels it can’t provide them with the
most accurate information available. Along those lines, why would users
even want data that Google feels isn’t the best on maps of countries
that aren’t generally the most searched for in the world anyway?
As far as I’m concerned, maps should be kept blank if the data isn’t
sufficient to populate them and if users don’t like it, well, that’s
their problem
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
